I'm cooking-up Loma Linda veggie links right now. This does NOT look promising.

_________________Yay, and verily he said unto them, "Eat this nooch for it tastes kind of like cheese, and drink this kombucha for it is awesome. And don't be a vegan hating douche because no one likes an asshat." - DancesWithTofu

I used to have a stomach of steel but sadly as I've got older I don't seem to have any more and I'm a little nervous of stuff I'd have previously eaten. This means if a tinned item is more than a year out of date I probably won't risk it!! I tend to think vegans don't eat anything much which can seriously poison us.

I don't take any chances with leftover rice though since I was extremely ill after eating rice salad at work - it was a warm environment and I was eating a mouthful every so often as I worked at my desk over 3-4 hours. No one who ate it straight away was ill but I've never been so ill in my life, I was ill for over a week and properly delirious for the first few days.

I'm also cautious of out of date tinned tomatoes as I was quite ill after eating a can. I think the tin lining was damaged so I always check the inside of tins now before I use the contents, especially highly acidic foods. If the tin is mottled inside I won't risk it.

That said I recently ate some two years old chocolate cake (brought in hand luggage from New York to London so out of fridge for 12 hours plus before I got home and froze it) and it was fine!

Hahaha! I often have ancient stuff in my cupboards and freezer but have been getting better and chucking more out once it gets to a certain age, two years past the best before date is my new cut off point.

(I was thinking, with the recent food scandal about mislabelled meats, that if I was a meat eater my freezer would have been like a time machine for them - they could have DNA tested food from as long ago as two or three years to see how long it's all been going on for!)

Okay team, I've got a bunch of Russet potatoes that have been hanging out in my pantry for a few months. (Maybe 3-4 months?) They're a little soft but they smell fine and show no signs of discoloration or mold. (They're a little sprouty, but that's no big deal.) I used a few of them in a stew about a month ago and did not die. I want to make stew again tonight. SHOULD I EAT THIS?

_________________Man, fork the gender card, imma come at you with the whole damned gender deck. - Olives Did you ever think that, like, YOU are a sexy costume FOR a diva cup? - solipsistnationblog!FB!

Okay team, I've got a bunch of Russet potatoes that have been hanging out in my pantry for a few months. (Maybe 3-4 months?) They're a little soft but they smell fine and show no signs of discoloration or mold. (They're a little sprouty, but that's no big deal.) I used a few of them in a stew about a month ago and did not die. I want to make stew again tonight. SHOULD I EAT THIS?

Cut one in half. If it looks good I'd eat them. Although I might peel them first to avoid tough old skins. Potatoes were traditionally kept in root cellars for months and months, so I bet you're okay to consume.

Yep, I've cut 'em all in half and they all look and smell fine inside. They're just kinda soft. But they're going to get soft once I cook 'em anyway. They've been living in the pantry all this time, no exposure to moisture (except their own) or sunlight.

_________________Man, fork the gender card, imma come at you with the whole damned gender deck. - Olives Did you ever think that, like, YOU are a sexy costume FOR a diva cup? - solipsistnationblog!FB!

We used to grow our own potatoes and keep them in the root cellar. By the next spring/summer they were getting soft and had sprouts but as long as you cut off the sprouts they are fine. Not so good for baking but we mostly boiled them or used them in stews. We kept carrots too and they tend to get hairy and soft but still fine as long as they weren't obviously rotten or discoloured. And turnips! The happy triumvirate of root vegetables that kept us fed through the long winters.

(We had a freezer too, in case you wre imagining Little House on the Prairie, so lots of green and yellow beeans, swiss chard, etc.)

I have almost an entire Costco box of tomato sauce that's a few years old. I used a can last week and it tasted fine/didn't make us ill but I noticed that there's metal showing through some of the lining inside the can and the sauce tasted a little metallic. Think I should toss em? I'm mostly worried about ingesting loads of bpa from the lining but we might be getting some of the metal too.

Re-reading this I think I'll throw them out but it's so wasteful! Blargh.

How many times can I reheat pasta? I made Veg News Mac & Cheese and reheated a batch that is big enough for 2, but my partner isn't around to eat it. I'd like to re-refridgerate and then eat tomorrow, but is that healthy?

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

How many times can I reheat pasta? I made Veg News Mac & Cheese and reheated a batch that is big enough for 2, but my partner isn't around to eat it. I'd like to re-refridgerate and then eat tomorrow, but is that healthy?

It's not ideal. Reheating encourages bacterial growth because the bacteria have nice warm conditions while the food is heating up and cooling again. The safest thing would be to toss it. Plus twice reheated pasta never tastes awesome. But, as with most things in this thread, the overall risk of getting sick is still probably relatively low, just higher than if you had just kept it in the fridge without reheating.